Gene Daughtry is the chairman of the Republican Party of Pope County, but I hope his views are not the views of a political party I once respected.

I could feel the venom and the veiled racism, as I read his sarcastic rant about our President. There are many Republicans who once railed against this kind of attack on a sitting U.S. President, and called it unpatriotic. My father, who died a couple of years ago, lived with me over the last several years of his life. He called himself a conservative and a Republican. My father was a WWII veteran, a business owner and a great role model.

We had political discussions or debates just about every evening when I came home from work. He would have agreed with some of the points that Mr. Daughtry made, but as a whole, I believe he would have been saddened by the tone, would have disagreed with many of the points and recognized others as blatantly false.

My father was a thinking Republican, an open-minded searcher for the truth, a student of history and a life-long learner. He hated the idea of illegal immigrants coming into the USA. However, as he learned more about the issue, he came to support the Dream Act, as legislation would have given a pathway to citizenship for the innocent.

My dad was a conservative, but he was not an ignorant hater. He studied the issue of homosexuality and by the time he died at the age of 88, he had come around to support full and equal rights for all gay citizens. He supported the idea of civil unions for loving and committed gay couples, as long as it was not called “marriage.”

Dad was a conservative but he understood the positive impact of many progressive programs such as public schools, the GI Bill, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Civil Rights, gender equality laws, clean air and water legislation, child labor laws, and welfare help for the truly needy.

He was a Christian who took me to church every Sunday, when I was a child. He supported the concept of separation of church and state because he understood the history and importance of this radical idea that has helped create a free-market place for religious thought and expression in America.

My dad had a hard time believing some white people were upset we had elected, as Mr. Daughtry said, “our first black president.” He really believed that that kind of prejudice had disappeared in America. I was raised by my father to judge a person by their actions, by their character, and not by the color of their skin or their ethnic background, and I thank him for this lesson.

My father would not recognize, nor be comfortable with the brand of Republican politics Gene Daughtry is pitching in our local newspaper. I miss my dad and I wish he were still alive, so we could discuss Mr. Daughtry’s comments face to face.